Television or video distribution systems, such as terrestrial (“over the air”), cable, and satellite television systems, provide many programs (e.g., television series, news programs, movies, sporting events, and like) by way of multiple program channels that deliver such programming simultaneously. An important aspect of these television distribution systems is the revenue generated by advertising (e.g., commercials) presented in conjunction with the television programs of interest, as such revenue is often necessary to make the production and distribution of such programming possible.
In some environments, locally-oriented advertising may be inserted into at least some of the video programs, often as a replacement for nationally-oriented advertisements initially placed in the programs. To insert the local advertising, the various program channels may be received into a router that is also in communication with an advertisement server via a communication network. The router may then retrieve advertisements from the advertisement server and insert the advertisements into the programs before retransmitting the programs over their respective channels via one or more communication connections to televisions, television set-top boxes, and the like.
Given the amount of video and audio data often associated with the video program channels, the router may require significant processing power to insert the local advertising at appropriate points in time of the various programs while avoiding processing bottlenecks that may cause data loss or interruption of service, such as, for example, video data buffer overruns and/or underruns. However, the purchase or lease costs typically associated with high-performance processing hardware may be beyond the financial reach of many television distribution systems that serve smaller viewer markets.
It is with these observations in mind, among others, that aspects of the present disclosure were conceived.